1. Field
The following description relates to a communication system and method, and additionally, to a small base station, such as a femto base station or a pico base station, that may protects a neighbor terminal corresponding to a neighbor base station, such as a macro base station, from interference.
2. Description of Related Art
Attention to a small base station, such as a femto base station, a pico base station, and the like, has increased. Particularly, there is a macrocell having a broad coverage in a cellular system, and small cells are located within the coverage of the macrocell. Here, a macro base station may be included in various cellular systems, such as Interim Standard 95 (IS-95), code division multiple access (CDMA 2000), wideband CDMA (WCDMA), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), and the like, and the CDMA 2000, the WCDMA, and the WiMAX support a femtocell.
An interference caused by a small cell may occur in a macrocell which is a neighbor cell of the small cell. Particularly, a signal transmitted from a small base station may be an interference to a macro terminal (a neighbor terminal) corresponding to a macro base station (a neighbor base station). The interference may disturb a communication between the macro base station and the macro terminal.
In general, the macro base station may be installed before femto base stations are installed, and the femto base stations are installed after the macro base station is installed. The femto base stations may frequently repeat turning on/off, and as new femto base stations are added, some femto base stations existing in the communication system may be eliminated.
Accordingly, it may be difficult for the macro base station to overcome a problem caused by the interference from the femto base stations, and changing of a hardware configuration, a software configuration, an operation sequence, and the like of the macro base station to solve the interference caused by the femto base stations may be inefficient. That is, the femto base stations need to solve the problem caused by the interference while minimizing effects on an operation of the macro base station.